[Hum_Calendar_Events] Alessandra Di Maio Workshop, 5/17, 4:30pm

[CDH Service Desk]

The Department of Italian invites all interested graduate students and faculty to a workshop with Alessandra Di Maio:

"On the Black Mediterranean and the Documentary Films of Andrea Segre"

Thursday, May 17 at 4:30pm in Royce 342

A discussion on three films directed by Andrea Segre: A Sud di Lampedusa, Come un uomo sulla terra, and Sangue verde

Alessandra Di Maio teaches at the University of Palermo, Italy and specializes in black, postcolonial, diasporic, migratory, and gender studies, with particular attention to the formation of transnational cultural identities. Her publications include Tutuola at the University: The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (2000), the collection An African Renaissance (2006), Wor(l)ds in Progress: A Study of Contemporary Migrant Writings (2008), and Dedica a Wole Soyinka (2012). She is the Italian consultant for the 2012 Lagos Black Heritage Festival, dedicated to the relationship between Africa and Italy.

A Sud di Lampedusa (South of Lampedusa, 2006, 31 min)
Filmed in Niger and in the Sahara Desert, by Andrea Segre in May 2006, with the support of Stefano Liberti and Ferruccio Pastore, the documentary shows the struggle of people crossing the desert, through the voices of the seasonal migrants abandoned at the Niger border and arrested in Libya. They are captured by the police and imprisoned in squalid conditions before being deported. One of them reports that the prisoners of Sabha champ are punished with forced labor to build the new police station. Lampedusa remains a destination that cannot be reached.

Come un uomo sulla terra (Like A Man on Earth, 2008, 60 min)
By Andrea Segre, Dagmawi Yimer and Riccardo Biadene. On landing in Lampedusa. Since 2003 Italy and Europe have asked Libya to block African migrants from entering Europe. What are the Libyan police really doing? What do thousands of African men and women really experience? And why does everybody pretend not to know about it?

Sangue verde (Green Blood, 2011, 48 min)
January 2010, Rosarno, Calabria. Widely publicized immigrant riots exposed the unjust and squalid conditions that thousands of African laborers, exploited by an economy controlled by 'Ndrangheta, the calabrian mafia, endure on a daily basis. For a brief moment the immigrants caught the attention of the Italian public, who responded to these protests with fear and violence.  In a few hours the immigrants were "evacuated" from Rosarno and the problem was "resolved." But the faces and the stories of those involved in the riots at Rosarno tell a different story. Revealing these stories and giving them voice is the only way we can return to these memories: memories of those days of violence, memories of a not-so-distant history of rural poverty in Rosarno that is often overlooked.

Refreshments will be served.

For questions or more information, please contact Beth Velinsky at evelinsky at humnet.ucla.edu<mailto:evelinsky at humnet.ucla.edu>


Beth Velinsky
Program Coordinator
Royce Humanities Group
P: (310) 794-9377
F: (310) 825-9754

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